Acorn Will Benefit from Housing Bill

The Wall Street Journal reports that Acorn, a housing advocacy organization, will likely be one of the beneficiaries of funds from the Housing Trust Fund created under the housing bill signed into law yesterday (and blogged yesterday).  Acorn has multiple arms – housing advocacy, a housing services, and voter-registration.  These arms are separate entities and most are tax exempt, but the main entiity, National Acorn is not tax-exempt and therefore its records are not public.  The advocacy arm lobbied hard for the housing bill.

The voter registration arm of Acorn caused some Republicans to try to keep the Housing Trust Fund out of the housing bill.  Although trust fund money will go directly to create new low-income housing, the concern is that for an organization like Acorn, providing money for one of its arms means that it will use more of its other money for voter registration.  Voter registration drives conducted by an exempt organization must be nonpartisan, of course, but Acorn works in areas where voters are more likely to vote Democratic.

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